Sylvan Grove

by Barbara A. Meier

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2021

Barbara Meier may have been born in Oregon, but she grew up in Kansas, and can’t seem to get the prairie out of her system. This collection of poems is an homage her family homestead near Sylvan Grove, Kansas, and the magical times she enjoyed growing up on a farm, enjoying the kinship of cousins and grandparents.

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When I visited Kansas to share the poetry of my father, someone told me “Kansas is a state unaccustomed to literary affection; but your father loved who we are.” In that tradition of prairie patriotism, Sylvan Grove leaves no doubt this place can be loved with honest lyric skill. The poems in this book return to iconic moments of perception in a landscape where miracles yield their bounty to the steady gaze. A guide to weather describes certain effects of light as not rare, but rarely seen, and this book brings to light myriad Edenic pleasures of Kansas ground. In the work of mending, turning sod, tornado watch, windmill, firefly, wheat turning green to gold, and other magic moments, Holtz performs alchemy, turning the ordinary unseen to resonant glimpses that remain.

—Kim Stafford, author
Early Morning: Remembering My Father: William Stafford

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